Hi,
Doug Weller schrieb:
>
> Or, as is thought now by many British archaeologists, is the
> population of the British Isles in say 500 bce basically the same as
> the population in 2500 bce, but there has been a language change and
> the adoption in many parts of various bits of European Celtic culture.
Yes, that's what most British archaeologists think at the moment.
However, there is a severe drawback to this theory: As yet, there is no
documented historical case of a people or, in fact in the case of
Britain and the British archaeologists theories about it, several
peoples, to change their language(s) deliberatly. Language change, as
far as can be said yet, only happens if there is strong political,
military or ecnonomic pressure upon a population to give up it's
language for a foreign one.
Thus, while the statement "the population stayed the same, but there was
a language chance and the adoption of various bits of European Celtic
culture" might sound pretty fine, it does not really explain how such a
language change did take place and why those various bits of European
Celtic culture (which isn't at all as uniform as most British
archaeologists usually pretend when talking about the "Celtizaton" of
Britain) were "adopted". In fact, the statement fails to explain the
process of how this took place completely, it only pretends to solve the
problem by simply ignoring it.
RAY
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Mag.phil. Raimund KARL <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Universität Wien, Institut für Alte Geschichte
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